Tides in Bays

Resonance and the Bay of Fundy

An interactive lesson with 6 steps, about 5 minutes: you predict, drag and solve, with instant feedback on every answer. It runs in your browser and needs JavaScript.

What you’ll learn

• Bays resonate; when their period nears 12.4 h, tides grow huge.
• Quarter-wave basin period: $T = 4L/\sqrt{gh}$.
• Tidal energy grows as the range squared.

Steps

1. Why tides vary so much
2. A quarter-wave basin
3. Tune the bay
4. Shallow-water speed
5. Tidal power
6. Twice the range